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Government policy is forcing single parents into poverty

Loneliness, isolation and poverty are now the fate of many single parents in this country. Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi finds out why so many of them feel like they're being punished "like naughty children".

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Liza was 28, working in a bookshop, and studying for a second degree when she became pregnant. “We moved in together because we thought we ought to. That lasted for a year after she was born.” Liza and her partner made a plan for their daughter’s arrival; he would help with childcare so she could return to work. But the plan unravelled when he decided to embark on a career change during her pregnancy. “So he quit his job and that was very stressful. We had no income really.

“I felt like I wasn’t getting any support from him, and I wasn’t getting any support from anyone else because they all thought he should be supporting me. So I left in order to get some support.” Liza makes a wry face and laughs. She is nearly always laughing; her dry humour usually directed at herself.

Mother and baby survived on income support and tax credits, two “big” overdrafts from her student days and some child support from her daughter’s dad. “That put a strain on our relationship. He didn’t appreciate them taking money straight out of his wages.” But the bigger strain was on Liza, who, driven by loneliness and a desire to escape the constant worry, scoured her local community, a small town outside Bristol, for friendship. “I had gone from being a free spirit to a lonely isolated single parent.”

Political rhetoric and featherweight policy solutions also disguise the fact that single parents areamong the biggest losers of the recession.New research from the Women's Budget Group on the cumulative impact on families of tax and spending measures introduced since 2010 (and including the impact of proposed policies up to 2015/16 ) found that single parents will lose 15.1 per cent of their disposable income to austerity policies. This is compared to couples with no children who lose 4.1 per cent and couples with children who lose 9.7 per cent. The break down of this income loss shows the biggest source of the loss is from tax and spending changes, cuts to further and higher education training, and housing. Withdrawing social security and public services that single parents need to balance raising children and finding decent work will simply prolong their unemployment or force them into a poverty wage. That is exactly what happened to Liza.

Initially, Liza managed, but was relieved when came across the Single Parent Action Network (her daughter Ruth was nearly three by this time). SPAN is a charity based in Bristol that provides a wide range of support to one parent families. “I mainly went because they had a free creche and . . . just to get a break. The first thing I did was fabric painting. It was the first time I had had any time away from Ruth. It was two hours, but it was amazing. Every parent should be able to do that.” Liza worked her way through all of SPAN’s skills courses, but kept going back to volunteer, teach classes, and soon began helping with SPAN’s research and policy work.

The report Liza helped compile was an ambitious project charting the journeys of 50 single parents over three years as they moved from income support to Jobseeker’s Allowance. The project results forced Liza to question the support she could hope to receive when she eventually resumed looking for work once Ruth started full time schooling.

“I remember one particular lady who had been a midwife or a nurse. She just needed a bit more training to get back into it. She was told, ‘You can’t do that because you won’t be looking for work’. There is no long term thinking. A lot of people went into jobs that either didn’t financially work or the childcare didn’t really work. They ended up back on benefits.”

There were success stories, but overall there was a sense that these parents were being punished “like naughty children”. Liza was struck by the overwhelming sense of fear and constant worry. The subtle prejudice against single mothers, which had come from politicians and the media, had indeed crept into the minds of the agencies tasked with helping this group. If the agencies themselves decide that single parents are undeserving, then you have a situation where ordinary parents are having to fight individual battles to prove otherwise, and argue for their share of state support.

“It was the idea that you had to justify your existence.” Liza says, “and your right to have any financial support. That came across in the interviews, ‘I had to justify why I deserved to have the money’. Whereas before it had been you deserve this because you are doing this really hard job on your own.”

Liza shudders. “I thought, that just won’t be good for my mental health, to have to go every two weeks, justify my existence, prove that I am looking for work that isn’t there.” She laughs again, holding her head in her hands. “It was a bit of cop out. I would have been ideally placed to go into the jobcentre and challenge them. But knowing your rights is not enough. They have got all the power. It felt like a lose-lose situation that I just didn’t want to get into. I would rather have any job than have to go through what these people have had to go through and be treated like that.”

As Ruth’s fifth birthday approached Liza was haunted by the voices of the women she had interviewed. She waited anxiously for the letter from the Department for Work and Pensions telling her that she too would have to move from income support and attend JobCentre Plus. Instead, she gave up on the fruitless applications for jobs that matched her ability and interests, and eventually she took a job caring for a lady who recently had a stroke. “I didn’t have any work experience, but my mum was disabled and I lived with my nan for a long time.

“It didn’t really feel like a decision. I thought, this is going to be really difficult, because my nan had dementia. And it was very similar working with someone who had a stroke who had memory loss. I did think, ‘Can I do this again?’”

“It is not skilled, but I have just gone down that road ever since. I think if you went back and said to Liza who left university, who thought ‘Right, I am just going to work at Waterstones for a bit, then I am going to take on the world’, that she was going to end up doing caring work . . . she would be like, no, no, no, no.”

When we met in April Ruth had turned seven and Liza was working as a carer for an elderly lady with Parkinson’s. This paid £70 a week and provided little security, no paid holidays or sick leave. Liza and Ruth’s income is topped up by £60 in tax credits each month, plus around £200 a month from Ruth’s dad. “I just about break even, although having said that I just got a letter saying water bill is going to come out. So I’m having a bad month.” She smiles, lamenting her inability to make a little money do the impossible. “Iain Duncan Smith says you can live on £59 a week, I am sure you can. But when you are looking after a small child and worrying about all the other things you have to worry about it, it is harder.”

As the state continues to draw back support, single parents are increasingly at a loss. Where Liza lives, after school clubs and holiday schemes are unaffordable at around £20 a day. In the face of desperate odds, though, Liza is still upbeat. “I do worry. I just have to stop myself. I like to think I keep it from her but I suspect she picks up on it when I am anxious. I do get anxious, generally about the future.

“I have to believe that somehow, at some point, it is going to work out. Even if it is not for another 10 years, even if it is not till she’s at Uni and I can study, and maybe get a better job then. I have to keep thinking that this isn’t forever, that is how I stay positive. I think that is true for most people in that situation.”

For many single parents, working is essential, but childcare is unaffordable. Photo: Getty

Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi reports and writes on immigration, women and economics, housing, legal aid, and mental health. Read her latest work here. Her blog rebeccaomonira.com was shortlisted for the 2012 Orwell Prize. She tweets @Rebecca_Omonira.